WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert October 30, 2005

Mark 8:1-38 “Who Am I?”

Some things are hard to grasp the first time you hear them. It was obviously that way for Jesus’ disciples, and this middle section of Mark’s Gospel is full of repetitions. It’s as though Jesus, in his experience, and Mark in his narrative selections, want to make it clear that many people had a hard time understanding who Jesus was, what he was teaching, and what he was telling them about his future and theirs. So we have repeated miracles on the lake, miraculous feedings of large crowds, healings of deaf and blind men. What does it all mean, and where is it all leading?

1) Who Is Jesus?

There is no doubt what Mark aims for. The last section of Mark 8 contains an event that is the pivot of the whole gospel. Everything before it is preparation, everything after it is working out its implications. Following the feedings, the warnings about the spiritually corrupting influence of the Pharisees and the Herods, the opening of the eyes of the blind man, Jesus leads the Twelve away on another highly unexpected journey. They get away from the crowds, 30 miles north of the lake through the valley beneath the shadow of what today we call the Golan Heights, until they reach the edge of the town of Caesarea Philippi.

This was another city built by the Herod family – in this case Herod Philip, the half-brother of the Herod Antipas responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist. Philip built a town and dedicated it to the Emperor Augustus, and of course to himself: so Caesarea Philippi. It was a thoroughly Gentile, Greek-speaking area; at one time a shrine area for the Greek god Pan; and now a place of emperor-worship. Jesus brings the Twelve into this strange place to get them to talk seriously about the great question that all his miracles and feedings and healings pointed to: “who am I?”

Their responses come in two waves. First there is the common belief of the crowds. Jesus is a miracle-worker in the tradition of Elijah – whom everyone knew would one day “return” because he had not died but gone to heaven in a chariot of fire! Or perhaps Jesus was indeed John the Baptist returned from the grave. Or maybe he was a prophet, either Isaiah or Jeremiah, whom the rabbis said would reappear before the “Day of the Lord.”

But the crucial question is the one Jesus poses to the men who have been with him as friends and helpers for months: “Who do you say I am?” At this moment, human evaluation fails, and Peter speaks for the group in a moment of inspiration: “You are the Messiah” – “you are the Christ, the Anointed One” whom God promised to send to save his people. As we know from the account in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus responds by saying that this is not human knowledge, but is a revelation from his Father in heaven – and he renames Simon as Peter, because on his confession Jesus will build his kingdom and his church.

“You are the Christ.” This is what the gospel narrative has been leading up to; this is what marks out Peter and the Twelve as Jesus’ true disciples: they have come to recognize who Jesus is, they have done so because it has been revealed to them by God, and they have confessed verbally their belief in him. They know the answer to the oft-posed question, “Who is this?”

The confession that Peter utters on behalf of the Twelve is – at least in Protestant interpretation of these texts, the “rock” on which Jesus will build his church. But there is, of course, a word-play going on here, for “petros” is the Greek word for a rock, and Simon is being renamed “Peter, the rock.” Understandably, many have concluded that Peter the man was to become the foundation of the church. But what follows in the narrative suggests that it is perhaps not the man, but his confession, that will be the true foundation.

2) The Suffering Christ

But we must first grasp in what way this confession at Caesarea Philippi is the pivot, the great turning-point of the Gospel. Jesus is acknowledged as the LORD’s Anointed – in this place full of the aroma of earthly kings and powers – but this revelation precipitates statements by Jesus about the kind of Messiah he is; statements that astound and confuse the Twelve.

From this moment on, now that he is named as “the Christ,” Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” “He spoke plainly about this...” This is what the scholars call “The First Announcement of the Passion.” Jesus will repeat and expand on these words in Mark 9 and Mark 10 – he will repeat the message until it finally begins to sink into the hearts of the Twelve.

For all his popular acclaim, for all the crowds that follow him, for all the miracles and healings he has done and will do – the religious authorities are going to kill him! Imagine being part of a great movement, following a Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela or some leader you worship, and being told in a private leaders’ meeting that he knows he will soon be arrested and executed – indeed that he “must” be!

No wonder the Twelve were confused! If he was the Messiah, he was supposed to conquer evil, to restore Israel, to save God’s people from their oppressors, to bring in God’s kingdom and the reign of peace and righteousness! What was this about dying at the hands of the authorities? Was he crazy? Did he not understand the role of the Messiah? So Peter, ever ready to speak for the group, takes Jesus aside and rebukes him! Peter seems to think he knows better than Jesus what God intends to be the outcome of Jesus’ ministry. Is there perhaps a little arrogance here? A disciple lectures the Messiah on what it means to be the “Anointed One”?

Understand then why Jesus responds as he does to Peter. Here is “the temptation” that Jesus faced over and over – in the desert after his baptism, in the garden before his death – to not follow the way he knew his Father had designed for him, but to find an easier path. The source of this temptation is his enemy, Satan the accuser; and now Peter has become his unwitting tool. Jesus rebukes Peter, and says “Get behind me, Satan... you do not understand God’s ways, you are thinking only like a man” – and in this you have become a snare and stumbling-block in my way, you are tempting me to get off the path of my Father’s will to follow your ideas of how to be the Messiah.

So Peter, to whom God had revealed who Jesus was, is reduced to very human fallibility, shown to be capable of profound error in knowing the will of God, rebuked in this moment as a tool in the devil’s hands. Not, perhaps, the person on whom to build the kingdom of God. Rather we should see Peter’s inspired confession of who Jesus is as the rock on which the church will be built.

3) Carrying Your Cross

Leaving Caesarea Philippi and returning to Galilee, Jesus calls others and the Twelve to him so that he can expand on the role of the Suffering Messiah and what it means to be his disciple.

To follow Jesus will mean to “carry your cross,” just as he will. That is a status reserved for those whom the authorities regard as criminals, slaves, traitors to the state. Only the lowest are crucified, but that is where Jesus is headed, and he invites his disciples to join him. People who carry their crosses face rejection and death; they no longer control their own lives or destinies. This is not bearing with some minor inconvenience in life and calling it “the cross you must bear,” this is about giving your whole life and future and hope into the hands of a leader who will lead you into death.

But not only death! Did he not tell the Twelve: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected... he must be killed and on the third day rise again”! Beyond death, Jesus knows, is life! The person who willingly sacrifices himself will find life. Those who are unwilling to let go of anything, who want to control their futures at all costs, will in the end lose everything. It they hold on with grim determination to every material thing that comes into reach, they will lose their lives and their very souls. To be a true disciple of Jesus means to let go of what everyone else thinks of as the essentials and certainties of life, of the right way to go, of the way to win friends and influence people. It means relying on him and him alone; believing that he knows what he is saying ,that he knows where he is going, that his grasp of the Father’s will so far exceeds ours that we are fools if we think we know better than he what is good for our lives.

So here we live, 2000 years on this side of Jesus’ having fulfilled exactly what he said he would in his life, his death and his resurrection. He died and rose, and it took generations, centuries, before his followers came close to grasping the full meaning of what he had done. But they knew him, they met him as the risen and living one, and they gladly gave over their lives to following him – discovering, as he said – that this was the way to true life. They learned from him to hold loosely to material things, to release control over their lives, and discovered that when you give it up, you get it back in abundance.

So today we have the privilege of not only Jesus’ recorded words and deeds, but the inward testimony of his Spirit, and the example and testimony of millions of his followers. And so to us too comes Jesus’ question: “You – who do you say I am?” The “you” is emphatic – you must decide who he is, you must respond, you must confess. If God’s Spirit reveals to you who Jesus is, and you confess him as Lord and Messiah, only then will you begin to grasp why he “must” die, and to accept that it is precisely his death and resurrection that open the door for you into blessedness in this life and the next.

Only when you have met Jesus and know who he is, will you accept his claim on your life, and know it is true that to be his disciple, you must be ready to let go of all the things you are tempted to rely on – your own strength, your own wisdom, your own goodness, your own certainty that you know God’s will.

Letting go of all that is a lifetime’s work for a disciple. It is not easy, and was never promised to be. To carry your cross through life is to see that the powers-that-be in this world are probably not on your side, and that you should be very careful about pledging yourself to them. To be a disciple means learning the inestimable value of your own soul, and becoming unwilling to sell it for a pile of stones or paper money or a plastic and metal vehicle. To be a disciple means confessing the Lordship of Christ in all parts of life, and not denying him when the pressure builds.

Jesus never said the journey would be easy. He did say he would do it himself, and then walk beside anyone who wanted to go with him. May we have the grace to put our hands in his, and go.

Let us pray...